Index

It's really not easy to find a netbook that manages to stick out
in a crowd of soulless atomic midgets, which look alike inside out. Yes, things are
starting to look a bit dull in the netbook segment, mainly thanks to
Intel's and Microsoft's restrictions imposed, and strictly adhered to by
most vendors. After all, nobody in their right minds looks forward to an
unfriendly chat with Redmond's or Santa Clara's spinners and lawyers.

So, they all look and smell alike, and you're probably thinking there's
something special about the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e. Well, no actually,
there's not, at least not much. So let's start with the stuff that
could make the S10e stand out in a crowd. First of all, Lenovo was the
first vendor to offer a hybrid storage option on its netbooks, a 4GB
SSD which peacefully coexists with the 160GB hard drive.

MSI joined the
hybrid club a few weeks ago with its Wind U115, which touts an
incredible 12 hours of battery life, although some MSI reps like to say
it's 16 hours, at least in their MSN sigs. The Lenovo S10e doesn't come
near this figure, as it's based on the N270 instead of the Z530 CPU,
and it lacks some of the power management features of the Wind U115. However,
MSI sells its U115 for a whopping €529, while the little Lenovo costs
€379, a full €150 less, so they're really not in the same class.

The second interesting feature is Lenovo's adaptation of DeviceVM's
Splashtop, which I am told, is an instant-on OS. Dubbed Lenovo
QuickStart, it loads in about 20 seconds, and offers you some
rudimentary connectivity and media features. In my book 20 seconds is not instant, unless we're talking about coffee.

You can use it for
browsing, instant messaging, Skype, and if you're bored you can play
some tunes or look at your photos. It's simple, fast, and it works.
Let's leave it at that, as we'll take a closer look at it later.

So much for the distinguishing features, under the hood it's a netbook
vulgaris. You get the picture, and if you don't here are the specs:
Atom N270/945 combo, 1GB of RAM, 160GB of storage, and the 4GB SSD
mentioned earlier. Unlike most 10-inch netbooks, Lenovo's S10e features
a 16:9 screen, which means you get 1,024x576 pixels on 10.1 inches. So,
the TV aspect ratio has robbed you of 24 rows of pixels, or 24,567 of
them to be exact. Some applications might give you trouble with the
non-standard resolution, but it's really not a big deal. The glare
coating isn't very reflective, although you'll be begging for a matte panel on a sunny day. Overall, display quality is quite good. There's plenty of contrast to go around, and the colours look good.

Design and Build Quality

I'm not a great fan of Lenovo's conservative, no thrills design, and
frankly some of their machines look like they were nicked off the set of
Miami Vice. However, I actually like the little IdeaPad. Maybe it has
something to do with the fact that most netbooks look playful, too
childish and cute, while the black S10e is a tad more serious, in its
appearance at least.

Measuring
250x196x22-36mm, it has the smallest footprint of any 10-inch netbook
on the market, but it doesn't look chubby either. It weighs 1.25kg with
a 6-cell battery. The designers did a nice balancing act: it doesn't
look as dull as some Lenovos, but it still looks a bit more serious
than most netbooks, and you just don't get the feeling you're looking
at a child's toy.

Once you try it out, it doesn't feel like a toy either. To put it mildly, build quality
is above average. We've seen much worse on similarly priced products.
The palmrests feel solid, and so does the entire chassis. The chrome
decorative covers on the hinges look a bit cheap, but even they feel
ok, and there's really few things to complain about. We liked most of
the materials, especially the satin, matte screen finish, which looks
nice and doesn't pick up too many fingerprints.

The chassis feels very robust, and the rounded front edges further help
the general feeling of solidity. The keyboard, touchpad buttons and
palmrests are no exception. There's next to no flex in the keyboard,
and the touchpad buttons are pretty good.

The decorative mesh surrounding the LEDs and power
button, and a similar one at the front of the chassis, feel and look
good. They both do tend to gather loads of dust and tiny bits of fabric, but it's
fairly easy to clean up the mess.

However, some plastic bits just don't look like they've been put
together by Swiss craftsmen. Some of the gaps are pretty big, but after
all, we're still talking about a cheap netbook, and this is purely an
aesthetics issue, not a quality one.

Bottom line - it's no ThinkPad, but it's still damn good.

Also, in case you're not into the matte, all black design, Lenovo is
offering the S10e in white and red, for ladies and the sort of people
who would ban opposition parties, nationalize banks and collectivize
farming.

Input Devices and Ergonomics" />

Keyboard and Touchpad

We
already said the S10e has a surprisingly small footprint, and this has
a somewhat negative impact on the keyboard. Although the chassis itself
is small, the designers decided not to extend the keyboard all the way
to the edges. This basically resulted in a keyboard which is half way
between that of a 9-incher and most 10-inch netbooks. It is still
pretty comfy to use, although people with big fingers should be wary, although those people should avoid all small notebooks in the first place.

Someone
made the baffling decision to move the Control key one position to the
right, and place the Fn key in its place. This will result in a number
of failed copy/pastes until you get the hang of it. The Tab key is
tiny, and so is Enter. Another non-keyboard related issue is microphone
placement. You can see it just above the Atom sticker, and it's easily
covered by your palm, so if you're into Skype, think about a headset.

Fortunately, the
arrow keys are full size, and more importantly, the keyboard feels
bulletproof. There's no flex, no squeaks and twists. As we always like
to point out, you'll eventually get used to just about any layout, but
you'll never get used to poor quality. Also, bear in mind that the
layout differs from market to market, so be sure to check what it
actually looks like in your neck of the woods.

The
touchpad is also quite small, measuring just 26x57mm. However, it has a
scroll bar, it's pretty fast, and we got used to it in no time. Using it to zoom in or out is a bit tough due to the size. It can be
done with a little practice, but there's not much room for error with
just an inch of vertical space.

The
keys are a bit too small for my chunky thumb, but after a couple of
days I got used to them. At least they're under the touchpad, and not
on the sides, and there's no complaints about the quality whatsoever.

Ergonomics

Although some vendors offer three USBs on their netbooks, Lenovo has
just two. We can't say this is a big drawback, especially as there's a
USB on each side of the chassis. Let's take a look at the layout.

The power connector, memory card reader, VGA are on the left. The USB
is a bit close to the front edge, but this doesn't really make much of
a difference on such a small machine.

On the right side you'll find the second USB, as well as LAN and audio
connectors. Also, Lenovo is one of few vendors to include an
ExpressCard 34 slot on their netbooks, although it's doubtful many
people will choose to use it. Still, it can come in handy. The security
lock is hidden in the hinge cover.

On the front there's nothing to report. Just three status LEDs and a
decorative mesh covering two speakers. They are pretty weak, even for a
netbook.

And on the back, there's absolutely nothing, apart from the battery.
Our sample came with a 3-cell battery, but all S10e SKUs on the
European market ship with a 6-cell power pack. It offers twice the
juice, but also gives the IdeaPad a pretty big hump on its backside.
The latches seem pretty tough, and keep the battery safely in place
without a hint of flimsiness.

Another nice touch is the no-nonsense upgradeability, as its intestines
are easily accessed through a spacious plastic lid. This is not the
case with many netbooks. Add to this the ExpressCard 34 slot, and the
S10e is easily the most upgradeable unit on the
market. In case you were thinking about changing the OS, be warned that
you'll have a tough time making the SSD work.

Under load, the S10e tends to get pretty hot, especially around the
HDD. We were looking at more than 37°C after running a few benchmarks.
Sounds like a lot, and it is, but netbooks aren't really meant for any
CPU intensive tasks anyway, so this shouldn't be a problem for the
average user.

Everyday Use

The tiny 10.1-inch LED backlit screen is surprisingly bright, and
the colours look beautiful too. It does sacrifice even more resolution
than your average 10-inch netbook screen, and it's got a glare coating,
which we're not crazy about.

The viewing angle is pretty limited, but this is hardly an issue on
such a small device, it's not a TV, but it could annoy you while using
the webcam and trying to get the right angle. The 1.3MP webcam is
pretty good, and deals well with poor lighting conditions. You can also use Lenovo's VeriFace security software with it. Instead of typing in your password, the webcam takes a mugshot and lets you access the system. Neat.

Surprisingly, the sample we got shipped with a 3-cell battery, not a
6-cell like all current S10e SKUs. Unfortunately this means we can only
guess how much the 6-cell unit would last. While browsing with the
backlight set at 100% we were managing around three hours on our
sample. We tried playing some video too, and the 3-cell battery threw
in the towel after 2 hours and 15 minutes. You could probably get a bit more than three hours in real life, if you turn off some features and reduce backlight intensity.

This
isn't bad for a 3-cell battery, and you can probably look forward to 5+
hours of regular use with the 6-cell unit, if not even more.

If you were thinking
about getting the rare and cheap €219 SKU with no hard drive, think again. In
theory, you could add some extra storage with an SDHC card and end up
with a dirt cheap 10-incher with solid state storage all the way.
However, as the card ends up protruding out of the chassis by about
8mm, this is impossible.

Another issue, addressed earlier, is the
placement of the microphone and speakers. The microphone is easily
covered by your palm, and as the speakers are placed in the front, if
you use it from your lap, your clothes, or a few layers of fat, will
get in the way.

QuickStart

Lenovo is touting its
QuickStart OS as an instant on operating system, however, this is
simply not the case. It takes almost 20 seconds to boot, whereas XP
takes 38 seconds to boot to a fully functional desktop. QuickStart
allows you to browse the web, IM, Skype, manage your photos and listen
to music. Basically, it lets you do most of the things you're supposed
to do on a netbook.

It's most annoying drawback is that you're unable to set trackpad
sensitivity, so you end up with a trackpad which allows you to scroll
from the top to the bottom of the screen in one swoop, while it takes
almost three full horizontal movements to move the cursor from side to
side. It's very hard to get used to, and you can only hope Lenovo will fix it at some point.

Our sample didn't have QuickStart
installed, so we went about installing it ourselves. We tried to
download the OS from Lenovo's support page, which was pants and
wouldn't link to the file. It than offered us the chance to report the
broken link, but the link to report the broken link was, you guessed
it, broken. Long story short, once we managed to download it, the installation went without a hitch.

So what's
our verdict on QuickStart? Frankly it's nowhere near as useful as some
reviewers reported a couple of months ago when it first appeared.

It's doesn't boot up as fast as we'd hoped for, and the trackpad issue
is very annoying. However, it does have potential, especially if you've
got kids, or if you're likely to lend your netbook to someone else,
as they can play around with it without messing up anything in Windows.
Also, XP does boot to a fully functional desktop in 38 seconds, but on a fresh, clean installation, and this
will probably go up to over a minute once you install a thing or two. It's also a nice failsafe in case XP chooses to die while
you're in the middle of something.

Let's start off with some storage benches. Although the S10e uses a 4GB
SSD as the system drive, this doesn't mean it's using a lighting fast
drive, to the contrary.

HD Tune wasn't impressed, and neither was Sandra.

The average speed was 24.1MB/s and burst speed was rated at just
21.3MB/s. The average access time was 0.6ms, or negligible, while CPU
utilization was 8.3 percent. Sandra found it had an average read speed
of 26.1MB/s and 1ms access time. Basically, it's almost like using a
glorified USB stick as your hard drive. This is the norm in this price
range, and Lenovo is not the only vendor to use slow SSDs - they all do.

Western Digital's 160GB hard drive turned out to be a decent performer, as you can see below.

The real trouble with the SSD has
more to do with its capacity than its speed. With XP and the 180MB
QuickStart OS installed, you end up with about 1.3GB of free space, and
this is obviously nowhere near enough for even the most basic
applications. So, you will end up using the hard drive for apps, and
you can forget about saving a few watts on account of the SSD, although
this could potentially slightly improve performance, but only in
certain scenarios.

It does feel a bit more responsive than other netbooks we came
across, but we don't believe the SSD greatly improves overall performance, especially considering it costs you €40 extra. You're probably thinking the SSD helps the Lenovo boot a bit faster, well
it does,
but the difference is small if any, and with the OS on the HDD, it
takes it just over 40 seconds to boot.

There's really not much to say when it comes to CPU and graphics
benchmarks. It's an Atom, and it's not designed with rendering or other
number crunching operations in mind. As you can see, like all 3D
rendering software, Cinebench likes HyperThreading.

The overall 3Dmark 06 score was 92, while the CPU score was 476.

Basically we could have skipped these benchmarks altogether. The Atom
does what it's supposed do. It's optimized for power efficiency and undemanding, everyday
applications, not rendering or encoding. It's about three times slower
than the slowest Core 2 Duo CPUs found in most notebooks, and in
more demanding tasks (i.e. Cinebench), the gap widens. Nevertheless,
it's sufficient for browsing and office applications, and if you need more than that, you shouldn't be considering netbooks in the first place.

Verdict

As usual we'll start with the bad stuff. We don't like the glare screen
very much, although the display quality is really good. It fails
outdoors, in bright rooms and in vehicles, and a matte screen would
have been a better choice, even at the cost of some quality. The fact
that it features a somewhat lower resolution than most netbook screens
doesn't help either.

The IdeaPad tends to heat up slightly more than most netbooks, and it
has just two USBs. These are minor issues, and few if any users will
miss the third USB, or keep it under load long enough for heat to
become a problem. There's no draft-n wireless, the touchpad is a bit
cramped, but it's good, it has a scroll bar and supports some
multitouch features. Although the keyboard could have been a tad
bigger, it makes up for its lack of size with its ruggedness.

Build quality is impressive, and bear in mind that the S10e is cheap. In fact, it is one of the cheapest 10-inch netbooks on the
market, and it offers good value for money. However, saying a netbook
is cheaper than the competition doesn't mean
much, as most are very closely priced, which means you can get something else from
different vendor for lunch money. Having said that, investing in this
particular SKU, with an additional 4GB SSD really doesn't make much
sense, and you're much better off getting a cheaper version with HDD
only.

On the bright side, the IdeaPad S10e is one of the smallest 10-inchers
in this price range. At 1.25kg with a 6-cell battery, it's not heavy
either. However, the 6-cell power pack sticks out badly, which is not
the case on some other netbooks, like MSI's Wind for example. Lenovo is one of few vendors to offer an ExpressCard 34 slot,
and you can use it to add a modem or even a TV tuner to it, although
most consumers will never touch it.

In spite of its small footprint and low weight, it's one of the most
rugged netbooks out there. The materials feel good, and build quality
is truly exceptional at this price point, with an emphasis on the rock
solid keyboard. The screen hinges feel like you could use them on
bank vault doors, and the chassis feels like a brick. The design is pretty good
too, and compared to most cheerful netbooks out there, it looks pretty
serious. It is very easy to upgrade, which isn't the case with most
netbooks.

Overall, the pros heavily outweigh the cons, and our verdict is a
positive one, a very positive one. Lenovo proves you can build an
amazingly robust and durable netbook for under €300, and it doesn't
compromise on looks either. If only it weren't for the 1,024x576 glare
screen, it would get our Recommended award in a heartbeat.